COMMENTARY

February 26, 1989|JAMES G. DRISCOLL, Editorial Writer

Bruce Kimball, 25, was a well-known athlete, winner of a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics. He was not quite the best diver in the world, but close to it. Now he is in prison serving a 17-year sentence. With good behavior, he could be back in society in five or six years.

His victims, the two young Floridians he killed last year with his car, will never return to society. Their families have memories, but that`s all.

Jose Canseco, 24, is a well-known athlete, winner of the Most Valuable Player Award last year in the American League. He is even better at his sport of baseball than Kimball was at diving into a pool.

At the moment, Canseco isn`t in prison. At the moment, he hasn`t killed anyone with his car. No one can possibly doubt, however, that the irresponsible Canseco is on his way to disaster on the highway. Unless he changes his driving habits now, permanently, it is inevitable: He will maim or kill someone on the road.

His driving reflexes won`t always be quick. Even now, at the height of his athletic prowess, his reflexes can`t possibly avoid all the possible disasters emerging as he speeds along I-95 at 120 mph or more.

Somehow it didn`t happen earlier this month as he accumulated yet another speeding ticket, this time for speeds in excess of 120 mph. Amazingly, no one died. This time. But it will happen.

Canseco is a pampered man-child, a creation of sports gone mad. There is nothing wrong with being skillful on the baseball field, and America always has appreciated the home-run hitter, the speedy base-stealer and the outfielder who could throw out the runner at third base.

Appreciation, however, has gone much too far, with disastrous results. Across the nation, the pampered and overpaid athlete demonstrates his staggering lack of maturity and responsibility. Drug abuse, drunkenness, gross disregard for others -- all of that occurs more frequently now, as man-child after man-child shows he has grown up only in a physical sense.

Morally, psychologically, and in many other senses the man-child exists as a very young teen-ager. He is protected from much of the world around him, because his employers and hangers-on take care of nearly all his wants and needs. His air reservations, hotel reservations, baggage handling, meals and nearly everything else are taken care of by others.

The most astonishing aspect of this artificial life, in which responsibility for self and others is ignored, is that many athletes manage to overcome it and become decent human beings.

Canseco is being paid $1.6 million this year by the Oakland Athletics for his baseball talents. Someone in the Athletics organization needs to take him aside and begin teaching him to be a responsible man.

Someone should put the issue in stark terms. What if Canseco`s twin brother or his parents or his wife became the victims of a reckless driver? How would the grieving Most Valuable Player feel about the driver?

Someone ought to take Canseco to Brandon, Fla., and let him examine the scene of Kimball`s carnage. Kimball, of course, was drunk as he drove, which is different from Canseco. But the killing can be the same, whether it`s reckless driving or drunken driving.

Someone should point out the dead-end street where Kimball`s speeding car skidded for 397 feet, where his car struck his teen-age victims and hurled them 30 to 60 feet, where a trail of blood marked the deaths. Someone should take Canseco to visit the parents of Kimball`s victims.

Apparently no one took Kimball aside. Apparently no one tried to change his drinking and driving habits, or if someone did, it failed. Apparently no one succeeded in getting through to him the necessity of becoming responsible.

Well, Kimball was busy, training and all. Now he has plenty of time to think, and if he has recovered from the suicidal tendencies that worried his family during his first days in prison, maybe he is planning his future. It will be quite different. No coddling. Memories of death in Brandon won`t disappear.

Perhaps Canseco, too, will have time to think, depending on a Broward County Court judge. Canseco is to appear in court on March 16 on a reckless driving charge, and he could receive as much as 90 days in jail. The judge would reserve a place for him, and all meals would be provided.